Morning Bell: Waiting for Crazy
Conn Carroll /
President Barack Obama’s second address to the United Nations General Assembly almost sounded as if he were speaking to voters on the campaign trail in Iowa, instead of fawning diplomats in Manhattan. He mentioned his financial reform, his commitment to fighting global warming, his efforts to withdrawal from Afghanistan and his new nuclear treaty with Russia. In classic Obama form, he mentioned the words “I,” “me” or “my” 34 times, including this line about his efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program: “Now let me be clear once more: The United States and the international community seek a resolution to our differences with Iran, and the door remains open to diplomacy should Iran choose to walk through it.” As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech just hours later would show, President Obama is gonna be waiting a long time.
After kicking off with some brief remarks on the “failure” of “the system of Capitalism,” Ahmadinejad then turned to 9/11, which he said “has affected the whole world for almost a decade.” Ahmadinejad identified “those responsible for the attack” as “some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime. The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view.” At that point, to their credit, President Obama’s U.N. delegation had the decency to walkout. But the Obama administration then turned right around and affirmed their engagement strategy: “We didn’t offer engagement with Iran because we agree with what Ahmadinejad says,” said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. “We have offered engagement with Iran because we think it’s in our national security interest.” (more…)